This is complicated. I think SS has some very serious design flaws and shouldn't work as a game, but I 100%ed it AND 6-heart challenged the game on hero mode as well. If I think it was so bad, why did I play it for hundreds of hours?
Well, for starters, the package is appealing. It had a nice visual style, beautiful set-pieces like Skyloft, and an amazing orchestral soundtrack. Also I had very few games to occupy my time.
On the other hand, it had the single worst overworld in a Zelda game (even including Zelda II!) and the sub-worlds like Faron Woods were super linear and felt claustrophobic with the amount of "hallways" in the level design, and the motion control gimmick was... imperfect. Throw in repetitive boss fights and you have a hot mess.
Let's break these down, shall we?
The Imprisoned in the room is of course the motion controls. 1:1 swordplay sounds like everyones biggest fantasy for the Wii, right? Wrong! It frequently bugged out for a lot of people, and even when it did work, it was only 1:1 when idly moving the sword around, the actual slashes only went in the 8 cardinal directions with the addition of a thrust. Enemies would frequently telegraph their moves so obviously a trained monkey could figure out the pattern, so there was no real point to it. Even worse, trying to stab would often result in a spin attack going off instead. The worst part of the motion controls though, is that it really ****ed with anyone who was left-handed.
On the plus side, the game had a nice visual style, part-way between the exaggerated cartoonishness of Wind Waker (which, hot take, I still don't love, just in terms of the models, even if the cel shaded part works wonderfully) and the more normal proportions of Twilight Princess, just without all the mid-2000s grunge. The resolution was crap on HDTVs of the time, but on a CRT the colors looked vibrant, and the stylization mostly holds up, even if there is something... wrong with Links face. Wind Waker's style still aged better
The visual style goes right out the window, though, the second you actually do anything in the Sky. I don't care how good your use of color is, when your entire overworld is an unending expanse of off-white clouds, the entire screen just starts to look yellow after a while. Despite small rocks floating around, as well as the very rare sky island, theres nothing to really offset the endless expanse of nothing. The only thing that breaks up the visual monotony are the beacons, which brings me to a related issue: how can there be an opaque layer of clouds on the Sky, while the surface world can see a blue sky just fine? Yeah you can say "oh it's magic" but that seems a little lazy of an explanation.
The sole exception to the visual monotony of the Sky is, of course, Skyloft. I've always loved the idea of sky-based cities, from Star Wars to DnD to Known Space, and the idea that a god ripped out chunks of the earth to keep people safe is an interesting bit of worldbuilding (or world-breaking, to nitpick). The use of colors as well (building off the visual style point from earlier) along with the unique Loftwings helps to paint a picture of a unique and fantastic place. The glimpses into how the environment shaped the culture tickles the worldbuilding part of my brain and I like it.
On the other end of the spectrum, we've got the... regional areas? sub-worlds? whatever the **** they're called. Faron Woods is I think the most emblematic of the overall design issue. The world is very linear, with a number of places bottlenecking through narrow hallways. This can work, if it's used sparingly. It was not. Unlike a game such as, say, Monster Hunter World, where the north end of the forest is full of narrow pathways due to cliffs and tightly-packed trees, Faron woods is restrictive and takes place between cliffs.... just because. The environment isn't creatively used, and the section just after the Temple is the worst example of this.
At least the dungeons fared slightly better, though. Two of the best dungeons in the game come in during the second half of the story, specifically the Sand Ship and the Fire Sanctuary. The Fire Sanctuary worked well because of the slightly more open layout (or at least it gave off the illusion of openness, which is tricky to do in a linear game like this), and the Sand Ship had a unique puzzle. It was also a derelict pirate ship, which instantly makes it the best dungeon in the game, I'm sorry, those are just the rules.
Unfortunately, the downside is that those interesting dungeons have the worst bosses. The Fire Sanctuary has a re-battle of His Demonic Fabulousness, which is super un-interesting, especially since Girahim is barely a character, let alone a persistent antagonist. With the Sand Ship, the mini boss is a reanimated skeletal pirate with an electrified sword. You'd think that with the pirate motif and that mini boss, the end boss would be a more powerful pirate, perhaps maybe alive again due to the Timeshift Stones, right? WRONG! It's a generic "shoot the eye" boss. It's baffling that the same game that has Koloktos as a boss had to rely on SquiggleHair McShootMeInTheEye for a *pirate ship* of all things. Also, rebattling The Imprisoned three times sucked, it was terrible, and I hate it.
Ending off with a positive, the OST for the game is really good. The orchestral sounds really come through, and the grand sense of scale that the Sky Theme imparts is fantastic. Unfortunately, it has to go with the Sky, so it's dragged down by association. I firmly believe that if it was attached to a better-designed game, then this would be one of the best soundtracks in the series. Even Fi's theme (for a character nobody really liked) is a wonderful little piano piece. If only the rest of the game was so good. Also the Demise Part 2 theme sounds like a track for a Pokemon Champion Battle and I love it.
Overall do I think that it's a good game? Yeee-esss... ish. The good parts are really great, and if the issues were reworked, there's the potential for a great game.
